by Rosanna Ley
‘The key, yes, pleased to meet you.’ The man seemed a little nervous but produced a key from the ring looped into the belt of his longyi.
‘Come.’ Ramon led the way. He unlocked a door and flung it open. There was a car inside. And then she realised it was the car, the one in the photo. A gorgeous vintage car, all cream curves and red leather interior.
‘Your father’s car,’ she breathed.
‘It is a Sunbeam Alpine.’ Ramon stroked the cream bodywork lovingly. ‘It was his prized possession. He had it shipped over here when he knew he would stay.’
Their eyes met and once again she felt it, that frisson she had felt in Pyin Oo Lwin as they had walked together towards Pine Rise, the roadside lined with the sweet scented blossom of frangipani. And that sense, last night, of feeling close to him.
‘Ramon!’ Suddenly one of his workers was at the warehouse door, waving his arms and gesticulating. The warehouse manager was beside him, tearing his fingers through his hair.
They looked at one another and laughed. It seemed they were destined to be interrupted.
‘I can get a taxi,’ Eva said. ‘It’s no problem.’
Ramon frowned. ‘I will call a car for you. Excuse me for a moment, Eva.’ He touched her face with his fingers. So briefly. But in that moment she knew. She wasn’t mistaken. He’d felt that frisson just as she had.
Ramon stood in a huddle with the man who had just appeared and the warehouse manager, their voices rising, all talking at once, it seemed. They all sounded a little on edge, she thought.
Unnoticed, she wandered outside the warehouse and towards the truck still parked outside. So there was a spark and it wasn’t just from the moonlight or the scent of frangipani. It was there in broad hot spanking daylight outside a furniture factory in Mandalay. Did that mean it was real?
She turned to look back at the factory building. It had taught her a lot about the man. He was a perfectionist and he was talented, for he had told her he still liked to get hands-on and she had observed that much of the furniture was designed and crafted by him alone. He cared about his work … She thought of the way he had run his hands over both the highly polished, finished pieces and the timber, raw, from where those pieces had begun. She thought of his expression when he’d been carving that piece of wood.
He cared for his employees. He loved his family too, especially his grandmother, and he cared deeply about Burmese trade and ethics. Eva wondered. How well did Ramon know the Li family and the business they ran? Would he be shocked if he knew how they were trying to hoodwink tourists, passing off old tat they’d artificially distressed as genuine antiques? But she couldn’t tell him about it, not without admitting that she’d been there.
The sun was hot on her head despite the protection from her hat. Eva glanced at the old truck loaded with crates, wondered vaguely where the containers might be going. Japan, maybe, or China? She knew Ramon’s dream was to export further afield, to expand, even set up a partner business elsewhere. Dreams … They could, she thought, be dangerous things.
She took a step closer. The door hadn’t been closed properly and the wooden crate nearest to the back of the truck was clearly visible. She peered at the address label. Did a double-take. It couldn’t be … She looked again. But it was. Her company’s name The Bristol Antiques Emporium and their address in Bristol was written there, clear as day.
How odd. Eva frowned. But the Emporium was an antique company. Why would Ramon be sending a container of his handmade furniture out to them? And why on earth hadn’t he told her? She had told him the name of her company, told him what she was doing here …
Eva ran her fingers lightly over the wooden crate as if it could tell her what was inside. And then she noticed something else. Under the stamp of the sender, ‘Handmade in Mandalay’, she could make out a different kind of marking, something that was familiar, something that made her blood run cold.
‘Hey!’ Wai Yan the warehouse manager was racing towards her. He looked furious. ‘What you doing? Come away from there!’
Eva took a step back. ‘Sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I was just curious …’
‘You stay away!’ He seemed quite threatening now as he brandished his clipboard, his face like thunder.
‘What is going on?’ Suddenly, Ramon was beside them. ‘What has happened?’
The man muttered something in Burmese. He pointed to Eva, gesticulated at the truck, his voice seemed to go on and on in an incomprehensible stream.
Why wouldn’t he stop talking? Suddenly, there didn’t seem to be enough air. Eva felt a wave of dizziness, her head was pounding and she swayed on her feet.
‘Eva, are you OK?’ Ramon’s face swam in front of hers. His green eyes were concerned. Thankfully, the other man had stopped talking, though he was still standing there looking decidedly twitchy.
‘It’s alright, really.’ She forced a smile.
‘Your taxi is here.’ He put an arm around her. Eva’s first instinct was to shrug it off but she couldn’t find the energy. ‘I shouldn’t have left you out here alone in this heat,’ he was murmuring into her hair. ‘I am so sorry. Take no notice of Wai Yan. I do not know what possessed him. He imagined you were stealing something.’ He laughed.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She had only been out there for a few minutes. But her throat was parched and her lips dry.
‘Are you sure you are OK?’ He bent closer. ‘You look as if you have seen a ghost.’
‘I’m fine.’
Ramon opened the car door and helped her in, giving the hotel name to the driver and handing him a couple of notes. And this time Eva couldn’t be bothered to protest.
He leant in, his eyes searching hers. But she couldn’t even look at him.
‘Later?’ he said.
She nodded. ‘Later.’
But as the taxi drove off and Ramon raised his hand in a wave goodbye, her head was reeling. What she had seen under the sender’s stamp … Had it been some sort of a mirage from the heat? That distinctive blue and gold? No, it was real enough. It was the faded image of a blue-and-gold peacock, the logo of Li’s Antique and Furniture Company. There was no doubt. Li’s were sending stock to the Emporium. And they were using Ramon’s company to do it.
CHAPTER 36
Rosemary took him in his breakfast. He was awake, but still looked a bit bleary. And old, she thought. And old.
‘Morning, Dad,’ she said, trying to sound cheery, although in fact she hadn’t had a good night, outside the morning sky was leaden grey and she couldn’t stop thinking about Alec.
‘Oh.’ He blinked at her. ‘Hello, darling.’ He frowned. ‘For a second there, I thought you were—’
‘I was what?’ And then she realised. ‘I was who?’ Who was important in her father’s life? Eva, obviously. Even Mrs Briggs, she supposed. She wasn’t family, but she’d been helping them with cleaning for years and with cooking too since Rosemary’s mother’s death.
‘Someone else,’ he said. He looked lost. Who, Dad? But she didn’t say it.
She helped him sit up, wrapped the old tartan dressing gown around his thin shoulders. When he was comfortable, she put the tray in front of him.
‘Mm, porridge,’ he said. ‘I’ve missed that.’
‘I tried to make it like Mother used to,’ Rosemary admitted. Let it bubble for a few minutes, a swirl of honey, a flash of milk.
‘Your mother always made the best porridge.’
She did something right then.
Rosemary rearranged the things on the bedside table. ‘What used to be on here, Dad?’ She had the sense of something missing. Like that old memory game with a tray and a tea-towel. It was elusive though.
He ate his porridge from the more solid edge, moving inwards. Tiny spoonfuls. Hardly enough to keep a bird alive, she thought.
‘It was the chinthe.’
Of course it was. It had always been there. Rosemary’s mother had hated it. Evil little creature, she used to say, and refuse to dust it
. It was a small rebellion, but somehow Rosemary had come to think of it as malevolent too. When she was little and went into her parents’ bedroom, she even used to snarl at it sometimes.
‘How on earth did you persuade Mother to let you keep it there?’ she asked lightly. All the rest of his Burmese souvenirs were relegated to the downstairs hallway where the light was dim and visitors might pass by the shelf, hardly noticing them. But the chinthe was the most iconic Burmese souvenir of them all. And Rosemary’s mother must have seen it every night when she was about to go to sleep. No wonder she’d loathed it.
Her father put down his spoon. He’d only eaten about a quarter of the small bowl. But he exhaled with pleasure and she knew he’d enjoyed it. ‘I didn’t insist on very much,’ he said.
She nodded. She understood. ‘And where is it now?’ But even as she asked, she knew the answer to the question.
‘Eva took it to Burma.’
‘I see.’ Rosemary recalled what Eva had said in her email. Something that she was doing for her grandfather, wasn’t it? But she didn’t see. And suddenly, she couldn’t bear it; he had confided in Eva and yet told her nothing. All these years. That she knew nothing of his Burmese days, apart from what she’d found out in those letters, apart from what she had imagined …
Rosemary took the tray off his lap and replaced it carefully on the bedside table. She passed him his tea. What if things had been different, she wondered. What if her mother hadn’t deeply resented Burma and passed her own resentment on to her daughter? What if it had been Rosemary who had listened, enthralled to all those tales of a far-off place and far-off people, an exotic life that most people could only dream of? Instead of Eva?
She watched her father as he carefully sipped his tea. But that could never have been. Because … Rosemary realised that he was watching her.
‘There was a woman,’ he said. ‘In Burma.’ He reached for her hand. ‘I’m sorry, love.’
‘Before you met Mother?’
‘No, not before that. There was always your mother.’ He chuckled. ‘I miss her, you know.’
‘Me too.’
‘You grew up together, didn’t you?’ she asked. ‘You and Mother?’
‘As good as.’
Rosemary listened to him talk. His voice was dry and thin, but the words rang true and she could fill in most of the spaces. She could imagine exactly how her mother had been, as a child, as a young woman. Demanding what was hers by right, refusing to take no for an answer, blindly believing that she could control everything and make him change. Make him love her …
It was part of her own childhood. Of course you’ll come to the shops with me … Of course your bedroom will be painted yellow … Some people controlled by physical strength, some by mental domination. Her mother had controlled by her expectations, by her assumptions that there was a wrong way and then there was her way.
‘I knew there was someone,’ she told him when at last his voice faltered. ‘But I didn’t realise.’
‘I had choices.’ He nodded. ‘I don’t blame your mother at all. She did what she had to do. I was weak.’
‘We can all be weak.’ Rosemary squeezed his hand. She hated him talking like that. She wanted him to be as strong as the father she remembered.
‘And Eva …’ He stared out of the window as if he could see her there.
Rosemary waited. What exactly was Eva doing for him in Burma?
‘She’s given her back the chinthe,’ he said. His eyes were bright. ‘It belongs with her family. It had so much history bound up in it, you see, Rosie.’
Rosemary nodded as if she understood, though she didn’t, not really. She only understood that she’d wasted a lot of years without her father, blaming him for something that she should never have blamed him for. What had he done that was so different from what she had done – with Alec? Her father had not been able to give her mother one hundred per cent of his love, his life. But at least he had tried his best. Had Rosemary?
‘Will you tell me about Maya?’ she whispered.
He didn’t seem surprised that she knew her name.
‘If you want me to,’ he said.
‘Have you told Eva?’
‘Some of it, yes.’ He sighed. ‘Some of it I don’t even know myself. Not yet.’
Rosemary patted his hand.
‘I’m waiting for Eva to get back,’ he said.
And for an awful moment, she thought he meant before I die.
CHAPTER 37
Eva’s head was still spinning when the taxi arrived back at her hotel. And she had to meet Myint Maw in less than half an hour. ‘Can you wait for me, please?’ she asked the driver. She would go up to her room, quickly get changed, collect her paperwork and the eyeglass she used to examine close detail and come straight back. And try not to think about what had just happened, she told herself, as she collected her key and took the lift to the seventh floor. Of Ramon and what she had discovered. Would he guess that she had seen what was in the truck? Probably. He must have thought she’d acted a little strangely. No wonder that warehouse manager had yelled at her like that. And yet … What was in that crate? And why in heaven’s name was it being sent to the Emporium?
By 3 p.m. she was once again sitting in Myint Maw’s stuffy little office. Thankfully, he had provided green tea.
‘Miss Gatsby,’ he was saying. ‘I see this, I think to myself. I must show her. She must see it. She will not believe.’ He shook his dark head, his entire scrawny body joining in the movement.
‘What is it exactly?’ Eva sipped her tea and wished she could summon up some enthusiasm. But it seemed her enthusiasm waned in direct proportion to Maw’s sense of melodrama. Unless the events of a very long day were getting to her at last.
Myint Maw made a big pretence of looking first to the left then to the right although the office door was shut and they were alone in the room. ‘Doors,’ he said.
‘Doors?’
‘Not just doors. No, no, no.’ He waved a long finger in front of him. Leaned closer so that Eva could smell his slightly rancid breath and see the hairy mole once again at close quarters. ‘Special doors,’ he said. ‘Intricate carving, yes, yes. Big doors. Old doors. Monastery doors.’
‘Monastery doors?’ She was sure they were very interesting, but … ‘Where did they come from?’ she asked. ‘What happened to the monastery?’
Maw gave his usual expansive shrug. ‘Restoration?’ But he seemed to be guessing.
And here we go again, she thought. Temples that were no longer prayed in, monasteries with no monks or novices living inside. Didn’t they care that the ancient treasures of Burma were being pillaged by the West? And then her shoulders sagged. What was happening to her? She was beginning to sound like Ramon. And yet now she knew that Ramon …
‘You will see, yes, I will take you in my car.’ Maw was nodding energetically.
And Eva knew that she had to be professional. She was here to do a job. She must at least see the doors.
They were in the back of another shop a few blocks away. And they were stunning.
‘Solid teak, yes, yes,’ said Myint Maw. ‘Two hundred centimetre high.’ His eyes widened and he nodded even more frantically. She couldn’t imagine the cost of the shipping.
She took her time examining them. Burmese woodcarvers were so skilled even from an early period, and the carving was both intricate and flamboyant. The doors featured two guardians, devas, holding sprays of foliage, and had been created in the mid-nineteenth century, she estimated.
‘Built by King Mindon, yes, yes,’ Maw was telling her, circling the doors like a terrier, flinging nuggets of information at her over his shoulder. ‘From Amarapura, yes, yes.’
Although not built by him personally, one would assume. Eva moved closer to examine the carving more carefully. The pilasters and pediments were rosettes, horn shaped projections known as saing-baung and the flames of nat-saw. These monastery doors were indeed, exquisite specimens.
‘
You interested, yes?’ Maw nodded as though this could not be in doubt.
Which it couldn’t, Eva thought. Because even if she didn’t buy them, how long before some other Western dealer snapped them up? They didn’t belong on a monastery any more. They were for sale, in a shop. It wasn’t her responsibility where they had come from. Damn Ramon.
‘How much?’ And Eva began the difficult process of negotiating a price. It was hard to haggle about pieces such as these and impossible to even estimate how much they were worth to the Emporium. But that was part of Eva’s job, and her responsibility. And Jacqui would, she knew, be so impressed.
*
An hour later, Eva was back at her hotel. She put a call through to the Emporium and when Jacqui answered, Eva told her about the monastery doors.
‘They sound magnificent,’ her boss said. ‘Can you email me a photo?’
‘Will do.’
‘And the contact?’ Jacqui’s voice changed.
‘Myint Maw?’
‘How does he seem on second meeting? Reliable, would you say?’
Eva remembered how edgy he had been the other day when she had talked about provenance. How he had seemed surprised that she even cared. ‘He never knows where anything’s come from,’ she admitted to Jacqui. ‘Like these doors, for example.’
‘But if they’re for sale …’ Jacqui’s voice was crisp and confident. ‘They can’t be stolen goods, can they? And if they’re genuine …?’
‘Oh, yes, they are genuine.’ Eva wished she could express what was bothering her. It was that feeling that something else was happening that she knew nothing about. Only now, perhaps, she might be closer to finding out what it was. ‘And, Jacqui, do we have dealings with a company called Handmade in Mandalay?’
‘I don’t think so. Why?’
‘It’s just that I saw a crate …’ Eva wasn’t sure how much to say. She wasn’t sure how much she knew either. And she certainly wasn’t sure about the Emporium.
‘What sort of a crate? Is something going on, Eva? Look …’ And her voice seemed to change. ‘You will take care, won’t you?’